About The Author

Contact Addresses

Postal Address:: Haedo 1505, 7 C
(1602) Florida
Prov. Buenos Aires
Argentina
Phone:: (0054-11)-4797-8038
E-mail:

(Because of spam, this address is a picture, it is not clickable)

Walter Fritz was born of German parents in Shanghai, China, in 1927. He studied mechanical engineering in Spokane, Washington, USA, and now lives in Argentina. He worked in the manufacturing engineering field from 1953 until 1985, and spent the last 20 years of his career in the automotive industry. He is retired now and dedicates his time to the study of intelligent systems, and to tennis and swimming. He was a professor in the artificial intelligence (AI) laboratory of the "Instituto Tecnologico Buenos Aires". He has given more than 30 lectures on subjects related to artificial intelligence, published two scientific papers and co-authored an artificial intelligence book, written in Spanish. He has published an e-book on intelligent systems in the Internet, in both English and Spanish. Now working on an experimental robot (For continuos reading, like a book - do not enter here now). called "Robby",

HE ENCOURAGES ALL QUESTIONS, COMMENTS AND CORRECTIONS ON THIS E-BOOK!

Programs written in the AI subject area

1965: A very primitive program answering natural language questions in any language (written in Fortran for an IBM mainframe). It used the questions to construct the subsequent answers.
1979: A program that resolved 80% of the Anstay (domino stone) intelligence test, written in COBOL for a Burroughs 3500 mainframe computer.
1984: The Intelligent System (For continuos reading, like a book - do not enter here now)., written in Basic.
1986: Six variations of neural nets, written in Basic.
1987: The program "Read It!" which transforms a scanned document into text, and was sold throughout the U.S.
1989: The Autonomous Intelligent System (For continuos reading, like a book - do not enter here now)., written in C.
1995: The General Learner (For continuos reading, like a book - do not enter here now)., written in C.
1996: Starting on the robot brain, based on the General Learner. Working on sound in and output for Robby.
1997: Working on sound for Robby.
1998: Working on vision for Robby.
2002: Working on software for translating the move concepts of Robby into signals that are sent, via the RS 232 port, to Robby's body.
2003: Still working on move software. In December, the function of one movement, lifting the left arm sideways, was working well.
2004: Working on the specification of the General Learner 3 (GL 3), which is an artificial brain that not only determines its external actions by rules but also processes the incoming information and selects the action to be done, by rules. The GL3 itself can modify and possibly improve these rules. See Present Investigation (For continuos reading, like a book - do not enter here now).

2005

The program GL3 is running, in a primitive version.

2006

Replaced the GL brain of Robby by the GL3 version.

Other activities in the AI subject area

1995: Starting design of a robot body (see Robby (For continuos reading, like a book - do not enter here now).).
1996: Changes started in the "The General Learner" program, to use it as a robot brain. A primitive sound input and output capability added.
1997: This e-book on "Intelligent Systems and their Societies" put on the web.
1998: Skeleton of Robby built. Working on pneumatic cylinders.
Starting on vision input through two color QuickCam's.
1999: All pneumatic cylinders are done and attached to the skeleton. Low level vision is done; that is capturing the info from one QuickCam eye and representing it as a three maps of red, green and blue intensities. Robby reacts to flute tones.
2000: Air valves attached. Low level input - output code for brain written. First limb movement tryout.
2001: Protective boxes for the encoders that signal limb position build and attached to body.
2002: In January the robot body was finalized, except for repairs and improvements (see Robby (For continuos reading, like a book - do not enter here now).).
My wife Susi started translating the e-book into Spanish and I am putting it on the web.
2003: One axis of Robby, lifting the left arm sideways, is working with a smooth movement.
A number of pages were added to the e-book , and it was completely translated into Spanish.
2004: Some improvements made in movement of left arm. Robby is learning the movements of the left arm well.
2006: Resolving some pneumatic and electric problems in the body of Robby.; Giving advice to a group of students at the UTN (Universidad Tecnológica Nacional) who are writing a Java version of the GL program. They include a "class " of relations between concepts, not only abstract/concrete and part/total relations.

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